Services such as voice, data, streaming video and other services are often provided to home and business customers/subscribers by telecom service providers, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) and so on. Customer premises equipment (CPE) may include various types of terminal equipment to process received MVPD signals to thereby enable subscribers to view, record, and interact with the services. Among the more common consumer electronics devices are television sets, set-top boxes, cable modems and personal video recorders. The various devices must be authenticated in some manner to ensure that only the CPE associated with the customer/subscriber at a particular location is using the provided services.
Unfortunately, within the context of wireless devices such as wireless routers, wireless set-top boxes or other CPE including wireless modems, it is difficult to ensure that wireless CPE associated with the customer/subscriber is in fact at the particular location for which the services are to be provided. This problem grows more acute with the progression of wireless network technology toward ever greater ranges. Therefore, a problem exists in that CPE authorized for use by a particular customer/subscriber may be used in an unauthorized manner by a nearby neighbor of the authorized customer/subscriber. For example, an authorized customer/subscriber having CPE supporting a long range Wi-Fi (e.g., 802 11.x) or WiMAX network may allow an unauthorized user to access this network. Even if access to the network is restricted to specific authorized devices (e.g., wireless STB registered to authorized customer/subscriber), the authorized customer/subscriber might give or sell an authorized device to an unauthorized user within range of the network.